


Diving Into the Wreck

by Wynn



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - X-Men Fusion, Angst, Attempts at communication, Complicated History, Complicated Relationships, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Drama, Eventual Healing, Longing, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-06-07 06:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6789649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wynn/pseuds/Wynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bucky is captured by the government and Steve learns he’s going to be given back to Hydra to incite a war against mutants, Steve tracks down Darcy for help finding him, despite the fact that Darcy had walked away from both Steve and Bucky one year before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a prompt received long ago from sevenfoxes: _Darcy/Bucky/Steve (or any permutation): AU where they all have powers (think X Men). Don't really care what you do with them, but maybe something where the "sides" in the X-Men universe exist: those who fight for mutant supremacy and those who fight for co-existence and where the three of them would fall on the spectrum. Bonus points for a government that is extremely hostile to mutants and a very long and complicated past between the three of them (if you go the threesome route)._
> 
> The story mixes Captain America, Avengers, and X-Men canon, both from the comics and the movies. The phrase “diving into the wreck” is from Adrienne Rich.
> 
> I've been working on this off and on a LONG time, more off than on. I'm hoping that by posting and, as is the case for all well-intentioned procrastinators, I work better under pressure and thus work on this consistently. I make no promises about the regularity of updates. I only promise that this will be finished.

Diving Into the Wreck  
Part One

 

When Darcy opens the door to her apartment to find Steve on the other side, she doesn’t need to be a mind reader to know what it is that he wants. Instead, all she has to do is look at him. In the five years that she’s known him, Steve’s never possessed anything close to a poker face. Rather, everything he feels shines from his eyes in clear and vivid Technicolor. It’s what had drawn Darcy to him, what had made her say yes to his offer all those years ago to leave Jane and her research to join his team.

Darcy couldn’t resist how remarkably the outside of Steve matched the in.

She also doesn’t need to be a mind reader to know what he wants because she watched the news, and a person couldn’t blink the past two days without seeing the government-sponsored reports about the capture of mutant terrorist James Barnes, the notorious Winter Soldier. The picture that they’d used in the report was an infamous one, James with his right hand raised as he used his power to rip apart an F-16. The reports conveniently left out the fact that the plane had been Hydra’s, flown from their hidden base outside D.C., but the news always left out those details, Hydra still too entrenched in the government and the government too entrenched in the media for anything else.

Steve raises his head to look at her, and Darcy has to bite back a gasp. A year since they last saw each other, shortly after the catastrophe at the Hydra base, and in that time, deep lines have burrowed their way across his forehead and pinched the corners of his mouth. Shadows ring his eyes. His shoulders slump, and he looks like he’s holding himself up solely by the clench of his jaw. Steve’s clothes match the state of his body, his baseball cap frayed along the edges, his jacket drab, and his boots dirty. Darcy catches a pungent whiff of mold and toilet as she stares at him too. She doesn’t know if it’s him or the clothes or both. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says as he spots her grimace. “I came in from the sewer. I didn’t want anyone to see me.”

This wipes the distaste from her face. “Are you being followed?”

Steve nods, but he declines to clarify by whom, whether by the government or Hydra or both. Instead, he says, “Natasha’s out with Sam, posing as me, so I don’t think anyone followed me here. Still, I probably don’t have a whole lot of time.”

Darcy waits for him to continue, but he says nothing more. He stares at her instead, taking her in. In contrast to Steve, she looks much the same, at least outwardly, at least the parts of her that he can see. She resists the urge to fold her arms over her stomach, though, opting instead for an arch of her brow. “Why are you here?”

Steve flinches at her blunt tone. He jerks his gaze away from her, but he doesn’t back down. He doesn’t walk away. He breathes in instead and squares his shoulders, then, once more, he meets her eyes.

“They’ve taken Bucky.”

Though she knew it was coming, her heart still betrays her, kicking up a notch at the sound of his name. Darcy steels herself against that and against Steve too, leaning against the door and crossing her arms over her chest. “I know. I’ve seen the reports.”

“So you know why I’m here,” Steve says.

“No. I don’t. I’m not on your team, Steve. I’m not on his either. I’m not on anyone’s. I left.”

The last makes him lower his gaze again. Sorrow creeps from him, cool and blue, but the memory of the dark that lurked within Steve makes Darcy clench her jaw, makes her reinforce the barrier she held between herself and the world.

Between herself and him. 

“I know,” Steve says, his voice soft, almost too low to hear. “I know you’re not, and I’m sorry. The last thing I want is to get you involved in all this again. Believe me. But Natasha found out what the government plans to do with Bucky.” Steve pauses as anger flares hot within him. Darcy tenses, ready to jump back, to slam the door shut between them, though the painted wood was a paltry defense against Steve, but he closes his eyes and draws in a long breath, easing down. Steve takes a couple more seconds before opening his eyes, but he doesn’t meet hers again when he does, keeping his instead fixed on the floor.

“The government… They’re going to give Bucky back to Hydra.”

Darcy gasps at the revelation. “What?”

A bitter smile crosses Steve’s face, one drawn straight from James. “You can’t profit off a war with mutants unless you have one. And you need an enemy to have a war.” His eyes dart up to hers and then away. “Bucky’s the one people know.”

He was, in part for what Hydra made him do, but more for what James himself had done after, for his retaliation against Hydra.

For raining F-16s upon D.C.

For killing Alexander Pierce.

Steve looks at her, his desperation rising. “I’m not asking you to get back in. I wouldn’t do that. I just need your help to find him. I’ve tried. Natasha and I have tried, but there’s no trail for us to follow. Nothing. I— Please. Darcy, I can’t—” He breaks off then, his jaw tightening against the emotion that swelled within him, that threatened, again, to overwhelm him. Darcy tenses and her mouth goes dry, Steve as unstable as he’d been the last time she’d seen him, but he succeeds here too in pushing back the anger that burned perpetually in his gut. “I can’t let him suffer that,” he continues, his voice low but intent. “I can’t let him be used by Hydra. Not again.”

He pauses then, as though steeling himself, as though forcing himself, before he lifts his eyes to hers and goes in for the kill. 

“And I’m betting neither can you.”

Darcy tenses again, but the words chip at her, forcing her to remember. She’d born witness to the suffering James endured while with Hydra, using her ability to help him recover, to help him remember. She’d thought before meeting him that she’d known all the horrors people could inflict on each other, getting a front row seat with her power to the hidden depravity of the world, but she hadn’t. Not until she agreed to help James.

Bile rises in her throat at the memories of his torture. Darcy swallows it down, gritting her teeth against a second wave. James didn’t deserve what Hydra had in store for him, not the first time and not this time either, no matter the anger that she feels toward him, and Steve too, for the tangled skein of their past.

Still, Darcy hesitates, the scar tissue pulling taut upon her belly. “I don’t know if I can. I haven’t tried to use my ability, not that way, not since…”

She doesn’t finish. She can’t, but she doesn’t need to. She knows Steve understands, she feels it in the shudder of his chest, in the bright arc of pain that slashes through the barrier between them. Glancing up, Darcy finds him with his hands fisted, with his head tilted down and away. She wavers at the sight, remembering the warmth of the sun and the cool lick of the wind as she sat on the grounds with Steve, their knees touching and their hands clasped, just the two of them, their breaths and thoughts mingling and bodies growing warm from—

“I’m sorry,” Steve says now, jerking her back to the present. He takes a step back from her, his eyes on the ground between their feet. “I shouldn’t have— I’ll go. I’m sorry. I just— I’m…” He trails off, his chest shuddering again as he tries to breathe.

“You’re desperate.” 

“Yes.”

The word cracks. The man does, too, Steve pressing his hands against his face. He trembles, and Darcy wonders for the first time in over a year what happened to him and James after she left.

For the first time in over a year, she cares.

“Come in,” she says, stepping back to open the door.

Steve jerks his hands down and finally looks at her. “What?”

“Come in,” she says again. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to find him, but I’ll try.”

Steve still hesitates. “Darcy—”

She holds up a hand, cutting him off. “You asked me and I said yes. I didn’t have to. I don’t have to, and if I don’t want to at any point or I can’t, I’ll let you know.”

Steve stares at her another beat, his reservations, maybe his remorse, primed and poised on his lips, but he gives in, his shoulders slumping in relief, or perhaps defeat. “Thank you.”

Darcy shakes her head as she lowers her hand. “Don’t thank me yet. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find him.”

“But you’ll try. That— It means a lot. Thank you. I mean it. Darcy—”

“Let’s get this over with, okay?”

Steve’s mouth snaps shut. Darcy looks away, back into her apartment. She waits, but Steve doesn’t push. All he does is sigh. She hears him step forward, sees him reach up to remove his hat as he steps through the door. Steve is careful not to touch her as he moves past, but her brain, like her heart before, betrays her and Darcy feels the heat of him, she feels the dichotomy of his touch, so strong yet so gentle upon her.

Steve passes from the short hall into the living room. Darcy watches him go then she closes the door. She tries not to read doom in the click of the lock, but the sound still resonates as a finality, as a choice made that cannot be unmade, despite what she just told Steve. Tony would likely think the same, if he knew what she was about to do. Darcy shakes her head at that. If Tony knew what she was about to do, he would fly over here in one of his gaudy suits and lock her up in the Tower like he wanted to do a year ago. She could try to explain, tell him what Steve told her. Tony bore no love for Hydra, or for the government either, spending the last ten years trying to keep his tech out of their hands, but he bore no love for Steve or James either, not after Pierce. Not after she got hurt. And now here she was, voluntarily diving back into that wreck.

No, her dad wouldn’t understand.

“Jarvis?” she whispers.

“Yes, Miss?” Jarvis’ voice emanates from the speaker panel by her head, as muted as hers.

“Have you told Dad? About Steve?”

“No. Not yet. Circumstances have allowed me to bypass Sir’s directive.”

“Circumstances?”

“Captain Rogers stated he had no wish to reinstate you as a member on his team or resume your prior relationship. Additionally, he has made no threatening gestures toward you, and you invited him willingly into your residence, so I am able to refrain. For now,” he adds after a beat.

“I understand. Can you let me know when you can’t anymore?”

“Yes, Miss Lewis.”

“Thank you.”

“Can he do a perimeter sweep?” Steve asks from behind her. 

Darcy whirls around, finds Steve in the threshold to the living room looking not at her, but at the speaker.

“Yes, Captain Rogers, I can.”

Steve nods. His gaze bounces briefly to Darcy then back down to the floor. “You should ask him to. Just in case. For anything unusual, but especially any sight of these two.” Steve pulls his phone from his pocket then and pulls up a picture of two people, a man and a woman, the man with a shock of white hair and the woman with dark, kohl-rimmed eyes. “Wanda and Pietro Maximoff,” Steve says to her, his voice tight. “Mutants from Sokovia. Natasha thinks they’re the ones Hydra used to take Bucky.”

Darcy nods. Her heart still beat fast, but her voice is thankfully steady when she turns to the speaker. “You got that, J?”

“Yes, Miss Lewis. I will alert both you and Sir should I spot either of these individuals.”

“If you spot _anyone_ ,” Steve says as he returns his phone to his pocket. “The police, government officials. Anyone that shouldn’t be here or that isn’t a member of my team.”

There is a pause in which Jarvis processes and then he says, the song remaining the same and the refrain beginning again. “Yes, Captain. Any additions or substitutions to your team in the past year?”

Steve glances at Darcy. She feels a flash of pain as their eyes meet, but she can’t tell if it’s from Steve or from her. Before she can, Steve turns away, stopping long enough to say no to Jarvis before he makes his way back down the hall to the living room.

Darcy leans against the front door and tries to slow the rush of her heart. Perhaps it would be as simple as Steve said, Darcy just using her power to find James, nothing less but nothing more.

Perhaps, but Darcy doubts it, nothing ever simple for her, not since the day she woke at thirteen to hear other people’s thoughts in her mind, since she met Steve and then James, and especially, despite her intentions and despite her vows, not since she left them both and walked away.

*


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy tries to find James without thinking about the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left comments and kudos on the last chapter. I hope you like this one too. I'm about halfway done with the third chapter, but likely won't have much time to write this week. So maybe two weeks until the next posting. *fingers crossed*

Diving Into the Wreck  
Part Two

*

In her living room, Steve stands by the coffee table, his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes on the textbooks strewn everywhere. Midterms loom, Darcy at Columbia and back at her poli-sci degree. She’d nearly finished it when she interned with Jane, leaving it altogether to join Steve and his team. Steve says nothing at the signs of her new life, her human life, but Darcy feels the same sense of sorrow within him as before, cool and blue and slinking out toward her like a wisp of fog. Pressing her lips together, she strides into the room, shoves the pile on the couch aside, and sits down.

“What can you tell me that might help me find James?” 

Drawing in a deep breath, Steve circles the coffee table and sits in the nearby chair. “Well, they got Bucky in Vermont, somewhere near the Canadian border.”

“Why was he there?”

“We don’t know.”

Darcy blinks at that. “Not even Natasha?”

Steve shakes his head. “She… They hadn’t spoken. She and Bucky. Not in a while.” His jaw goes tight again, but he doesn’t fist his hands so Darcy doesn’t tense. “We wouldn’t even have known he was taken, if not for the news.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The urge to know more rises within Darcy, but she stamps it down. Find James. Nothing more and nothing less. “Do you know what they can do?” she asks instead. “The Maximoffs? That might help me find him, if I can find them.”

“Don’t.” Darcy’s eyes widen at Steve’s sharp tone, but he doesn’t back down. “Don’t try to find her. She’s not a telepath, but she can do something to people. To their minds.”

Darcy goes still. “She can control people?”

“I don’t know. Something. We think she did something to Bucky that let her brother get a collar on him.”

Darcy looks away at that revelation. The days varied as to what she considered the worst of her father’s anti-mutant legacy: the collars that inhibited a mutant’s power or the Sentinels, robots designed to ‘protect’ humans against the ‘danger’ that mutants posed. The collar took top prize most days. Darcy had never been subjected to one herself, but she’d felt the pain of one from her work with James, Hydra using one on him in the last years of his captivity. It was a betrayal of nature, the collar, a biomechanical cage that burned from the inside.

The borrowed remembrance pushes Darcy up from the couch. She crosses to her kitchen, pulls two glasses from the cabinet, and then turns to the fridge to grab the water pitcher. She wills her movements smooth and her breathing even, but her body denies her, remaining stiff and stilted.

Steve waits until she fills both glasses before he follows her. “Will the collar be a problem? To find him?”

Darcy shakes her head. She holds out one of the glasses to Steve then leans back against the counter. “I’m more worried about him being unconscious. That’ll make things harder. Maybe too hard.”

“Even with…”

Steve doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to, his meaning clear.

Even with the link she has with James.

Darcy had blamed the island for a while, she and James retreating to Tony’s Caribbean hideaway as she tried to help James heal. It was the perfect location for such an endeavor, at least to Steve when he’d ask her to help, the island isolated and the estate secure. James would be safe there, safe from Hydra, from the world that hunted him, as Steve and the team worked on proving his innocence. And it had been safe, but isolated had become private as the days passed, and private had become intimate, it had become what it was designed to be by Howard so many years ago, a retreat not for safety, but for love.

The heavy weight of Steve’s gaze presses upon Darcy. She looks away from him and lifts her glass. He hadn’t yelled at her when she told him James kissed her, he’d only looked away, out the window of his hotel in D.C., at the dour day, and asked her, the words nearly lost in the patter of rain, if she’d returned it.

When she said she had, Steve had closed his eyes and said that Bucky was a good man and that he wouldn’t stand in their way.

The first tangle of complication, the first tear rending at them, but not the last.

Downing another gulp of water, Darcy glances at Steve. “Yes. Even with. It’s like any other part of the brain.” She lowers her glass then and starts for the living room, eyeing him as she passes by. “You don’t use it and it fades.”

Steve says nothing to the revelation. He doesn’t follow her either, not at first. Darcy sits back down on the couch and drinks more of her water, giving him time to process, to remember or maybe to forget. Half a minute passes before he finally rejoins her, sitting as stiffly in the chair as Darcy is now on the couch.

“So,” Darcy says after a few seconds, “anything else you can tell me to help me find him?”

His voice is flat, mission focused, when he speaks. “We think he’s still in the country, but we don’t know for sure. The only thing Daisy could find in the database she hacked was a vague email from some flunky of Stern’s to a guy in Prague with ties to Von Strucker.” Steve doesn’t quite meet her eyes when he flashes her a tight smile. “If we had more, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

The barb cuts. Darcy looks away and takes a drink, attempting to stamp out the flash of pain. She lumbers in the effort, despite the practice of the past year, Steve here with her and not a hundred miles away. Swallowing the rest of her water, Darcy sets her glass on the coffee table. She draws her legs beneath her as she sits back, places her hands on her knees, and then closes her eyes. She tries to concentrate, to block out Steve and the world around her, to turn inward and immaterial, but the ambient noise of the apartment building and of the early afternoon outside her window grow louder rather than quieter. Darcy hears Steve shift beside her, she hears horns honking on the street below, the quiet hum of her air conditioner, and the Pekingese barking on the top floor. Breathing in, Darcy tries to settle, but her heart beats fast and her thoughts race, tipped into turmoil by the man sitting beside her and the one to be found, by the thought of using her power for more than defense, for a shield against the world, once more.

After a moment, she licks her lips and begins.

_James._

His name echoes in the dark. Darcy waits a few moments, but she feels no reverb, no answering ping from his mind. Exhaling, she searches hers for an image of James to help her focus, but everything she touches upon stirs her more than it settles. James was many things when he was with her, but he was rarely tranquil. Even the mornings that Darcy had woken first were fleeting in their tranquility, sleep fraught for James, pushing him awake soon after her, to reach for her with hot eyes and a soft moth.

Hands tightening upon her knees, Darcy casts those images aside and summons another, an early moment with him on the island. They sat on the deck of Tony’s house, watching the sunrise. From the corners of her eyes, Darcy had seen the plates of James’ left arm rise and twist in the air. They fluttered, hovering like butterflies, glinting in the cresting sun, before he slotted them back into place. Darcy focused on this, on the way James had peered at her, not smiling, not yet, but nearly there, enough to bring an answering one to her face.

_James._

Nothing. The probability of him being unconscious increased. As did the difficulty. Beside her, Darcy feels Steve shift in his chair. His anxiety seeps into her, slinking through the open barriers of her mind. She forces her hands to relax, she rolls her shoulders back and draws in another deep breath, then she reaches out again, past the city to the world beyond.

_James. James, can you hear me?_

Silence still. Jaw clenching, Darcy considers her options. She knows the likeliest one to succeed, the idea of the link broached by Steve in the kitchen. But she dithers. Closing the connection between her and James and keeping it closed the past year had required constant control, a ruthless strength of will that extended far beyond the normal effort she expended to block other people’s thoughts. But she’d had the motivation then, a mind as raw as the scars on her body. Time, though, had healed her wounds, at least the physical, dulling the pain to an ache rather than an agony. Could she close the link a second time? The uncertainty makes her hesitate.

She knows, though, the outcome if she doesn’t find James. The government would give him back to Hydra and Hydra would erase his memory as they had before, they would unleash him against humans as they had before, using him to fan the flames of fear and hate against mutants, and then, using that fear and using that hate, they’d acquire even more power, they would, despite her father’s influence and Steve’s efforts, pass their registration.

Darcy shivers at the possibility.

First identification and then extermination. 

Darcy would escape, her ability and Tony’s affluence helping her to disappear, but others, Sam with his wings and Bruce with his green skin, Thor known throughout the world as a mutant, as the golden god of thunder, would not be so lucky.

Neither would Steve.

Neither would James.

Breathing in again, Darcy inches toward the dark corner at the back of her mind. There, she draws the darkness aside as a curtain blocking the light. None fills the space, not yet, but there is space to fill again, the void from the closed connection resolving from nothing to the possibility of something, of a link restored.

Exhaling slowly, Darcy reaches out once more.

_James._

Instantly, she hears a sharp intake of breath, far to the left, in the West somewhere. Darcy feels an answering one in her as she discerns the faint speck of light signifying James.

_James?_

_No._

Before Darcy can process the ‘no,’ both James and the light vanish. Or they try to, the light reappearing a second later only to fade a second time. Darcy stares into the flickering darkness, at James’ attempts to block her. This barb cuts too. It shouldn’t. She understands why. She would too, if she were in his shoes, but the spurning still stings. 

She wonders if Steve felt the same when she walked away. 

Squashing the thought, Darcy pushes out again. This time, though, she shields herself from James. After a few seconds, she finds the light, bobbing in the dark like a buoy at sea. Creeping forward, she follows the trail, the space filling in the back of her mind, the light brightening the dark until the world around James resolves.

He sits lashed to a chair in the center of a small cell. Two strips of fluorescent lights illuminate bare walls, white paint covering concrete. One door leads out of the cell, heavy wood by the look of the texture. Definitely not metal, not even the handle or hinges. Darcy doubts anything in the room is metal, despite the collar currently on James. Ignoring her indignation at the restraint, Darcy focuses once more on James. She spies bruises on his face as well as some dried blood. Sometime after his capture they had removed most of his metal arm. Only the parts connecting it to his torso remain. He could reconnect it once the collar was removed and his power restored, but the violation still makes her jaw tighten. So too do the drugs they pumped into him to keep him docile, misting over the rage in both their minds.

Darcy takes a moment to settle herself before widening her focus to take in Steve. “I found him.”

The relief that blows through Steve reaches her hot as a desert breeze. “Is he okay?”

“Relatively.”

Darcy describes the conditions in the cell. Each revelation amplifies the tension within Steve. He breaks when she reaches the loss of James’ arm, pushing up out of his seat to pace.

Pulling back slightly from James, Darcy opens her eyes. She blinks at the light streaming into her apartment. As her vision clears, she sees Steve pace before her, his hands fisted by his sides. He reminds her of a lion in a cage, straining against the bars. Unease swirls within her, foul in her throat, but what is she supposed to do? James won’t talk to her. He would to Steve. He loved- 

She shuts down the connection and closes her eyes. She feels herself start to tremble and tries to breathe. She needed to be calm. One of them did. She’d keep it short. She’d break the connection if Steve, or if she-

Air catches in her throat, tangling, stalling though her heart raced, panic gripping her and digging its claws in tight.

“Darcy?”

Her eyes fly open at the sound of Steve’s voice. He’d stopped pacing and looks at her, his brow creased in concern, but she feels it, she feels the dark within him, pulsing, pushing, rising to the fore.

“You need to relax,” she snaps. She snatches her glass from the table and pushes up from the couch. “I won’t be able to bring you with me if you’re this tense.”

Steve gasps as she walks away, back to the kitchen for more water. “Darcy, I— No.”

Darcy sets her glass on the counter and turns to face him. He stares at her, his eyes wide, his lips parted and hands unclenched, and she feels her pulse slow at the ebb of his rage.

“Steve—”

“I can’t. I can’t do it, Darcy.”

“You have to. You know more than I what to ask James to find him. Especially if time is an issue like you said it is.”

Steve shakes his head. “That doesn’t mean he’ll tell me.”

Darcy raises her brows at him. “And you think he’ll tell me? He just tried to block me.”

At that, the shock on Steve’s face collapses into a frown. “What?”

Darcy nodds. She makes her way back to the couch, stopping beside it rather than sitting. Steve stares at her a moment longer then resumes his pacing, his movements spurred by the thoughts racing in his mind. She gives him a few seconds to process, and herself to settle, before she says, “What is it?”

Steve shakes his head again, but his refusal to answer lasts only a moment. “I thought he’d want to see you. Even if he knew that I asked you to find him, I thought he’d want to. At least. Maybe even let you help, even if he didn’t want me to. But this…” He trails off then, shaking his head as he crisscrossed the room.

Now Darcy frowns at him. “You think he’d rather let Hydra have him than let you help him?”

Steve stops at this. He lifts his hands and runs them over his face and through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe. He’s… He’s not happy with me right now.”

Darcy again goes still. “Why not?”

Steve says nothing at first. He clutches at his hair, breathing fast. Then, abruptly, he lets his arms drop back down to his sides and sighs. “I asked Natasha to find you. About a month ago. And Bucky found out about it.” Steve pauses then, pressing his lips flat. Darcy watches him, her eyes wide. A few seconds pass in which Steve stares into the distance then he heaves out a second sigh, this one longer and heavier than the first. “He wasn’t happy about it.”

Darcy says nothing, too thrown to respond. 

“He was right,” Steve says, looking at her now, the words coming out in a rush. “I shouldn’t have asked. You made your choice, and I respect it. I do. I just…” He trails off, sending her a stilted shrug in lieu of his thought.

Darcy continues to stare, telling herself she needs to know for the mission, to save James. “You just what?”

Steve shakes his head. She feels discomfort twisting and writhing within him, but rather than give in, Steve pushes through as he always does, straightening his shoulders and looking at her as he says, “I missed my friend.”

The admission sucker punches her, stealing her breath and leaving her gaping. She hadn’t thought of this. He and James, the two of them, they had each other. After James remembered, they had each other. They _chose_ each other. They-

Darcy turns away. She blocks out the thought, the memory of the alley, of the two of them- 

“Like I said,” Steve says as she walks away, “I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”

Darcy grabs her glass from the counter and then the pitcher from the fridge. Her hands shake as she refills her glass. She feels Steve’s gaze upon her, she hears him draw in a deep breath, but the silence stretches between them. Darcy swallows down a quick mouthful, the water dousing the memories and cooling her shock. She drinks the rest, her hand tight on the glass. A bird flies past her kitchen window. The Pekingese barks again. Darcy feels Steve restless behind her, mind half out the door and half fixed on her. She feels the distant light, James to the west. The memory of him tied to the chair, of the ragged bits of his arm dangling from his shoulder, push to the fore of her mind. Darcy closes her eyes and breathes in, seeking balance, seeking calm.

He needed help. He needed her, whether he wanted it or not.

At that, Darcy faces Steve again. “Why did you think he’d want to see me?”

Steve blinks at her. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Why wouldn’t- Are you serious?”

Steve peers at her a moment, his brow furrowed, then comprehension dawns, widening his eyes, and he starts forward. “Darcy, no. He doesn’t blame you. He-”

She retreats, her heart in her throat. “I can’t. I can’t do this.” 

He lifts a hand toward her. “Darcy, please—”

She jerks away from his grasp. “Don’t! Don’t touch me!”

Steve recoils, nearly tripping over the coffee table in his effort to back away. He stares at her, his eyes wide. Tears begin to fill hers, and though her vision wavers, Darcy sees his face twist. She turns away, lifts a shaking hand to her face. She hears nothing from Steve but the hitch of his breath, wet with his own tears. Birds twitter outside her apartment and a siren wails in the distance, but she barely hears Steve when he speaks.

“I’m sorry. I thought- I thought I should be the one to come, not Natasha. Because I… Because I was the one to make you leave.” He stops, gasping for a breath, fighting back the sob that bears down upon him. “I- Would you still… if Natasha came? If she were here instead? Would you still help him?”

Darcy holds her hand over her mouth. She shakes, the memory of the dark looming in her mind, a roiling pit consuming Steve, consuming _her_ , the last time that she’d touched him. Darcy thought that she had healed. A year away. Hundreds of miles. No thought of Steve or James. She’d moved on, she’d made a new life, a _normal_ life, Darcy building barriers to fortify her mind, to protect herself and others too, but she mistook the isolation for strength, the space for progress. Ten minutes in front of Steve, just a second with James, and she’d fallen apart.

Darcy hadn’t healed when she left.

She’d just run.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again. Darcy can barely understand him, the words buckling from grief. “I- I’ll go.” He hovers a moment, silent, then he starts for the door.

“Wait.”

Steve stops.

Darcy wipes at the tears on her face. She swallows hard and pulls in a long breath through the thickness in her throat. As with the water, the air steadies her, enough for her to turn and look at Steve. His face is splotchy, smeared with tears. He looks cracked open and hollowed out, a far cry from Captain America, the halest and heartiest mutant in the world. 

“Call Natasha,” she says. “I think- If I can talk to her… I think I can.”

Steve hesitates again, eyeing her. “Are you sure?”

Darcy shrugs. “How else are you going to find him?”

Steve stares at her, no response to give, no other way at his disposal. 

“Call Natasha,” she says again as she turns for her bedroom. “We’ll find out where he is, and she’ll let you know.”

Steve says nothing as she disappears down the hall, into her bedroom, and closes the door.

*


	3. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy converses with Natasha and then with James.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments and kudos. This story's been weighing on me for a while, lurking unfinished on my computer, so I'm glad people are enjoying it. This reaches the end of the stuff I'd had written before I started posting, so it'll likely take a couple weeks before the next part is finished. 
> 
> дорогая means sweetheart or dear in Russian.
> 
> Also, I come for your feels hard in this chapter. Let me know if I succeed. :D

Diving Into the Wreck  
Part Three

 

Twenty minutes later, Darcy hears the door to her apartment open and then shut, then open and shut once more, and then soft footsteps pad down the hall toward her room. Darcy sits on her bed, incense lit on the bedside table. She’d washed her face and spent the past ten minutes trying to meditate, to steady her mind for the upcoming conversation with James, but focus slipped from her grasp like feathers in the wind, her thoughts turning and returning to the gutted look on Steve’s face as she’d jerked away from him, to James lashed, bruised and bloodied, to the chair.

A second later, her bedroom door opens and Natasha steps through. She looks much the same as the last time Darcy had seen her, a few days before the start of the semester, though her hair is longer now and a deeper auburn than bright red. Natasha peers at Darcy as she closes the door, taking in her still puffy face and wobbly smile.

Darcy lowers her gaze and tugs on the edge of one sleeve. “I’m okay. I just… freaked out.”

A beat of silence passes before Natasha says, her voice soft, “Understandably so. What happened between you and Steve, James too, that’s not nothing.”

Darcy stares down at her hands. “No. But it wasn’t Steve’s fault.”

She trembles at the memory, at the blackout rage that had consumed her when she last touched Steve. He’d explained to her the reason shortly after they met, the rages an unforeseen side-effect of the supersoldier serum mixing with his mutant healing factor. The serum amplified everything in Steve, especially emotions, his anger on a constant feedback loop that, sometimes, slipped beyond his control. He hated it, he worked hard to prevent it, with a ruthlessness that Darcy understood, she doing the same to barricade her mind from the world and its billions and billions of thoughts.

“No,” Natasha says as she crosses the room to the bed. “It wasn’t his fault. But it still happened. You can’t pretend it didn’t.”

“I wasn’t-” Darcy presses her lips together, biting back the denial. The automatic denial: out of sight, out of mind, no Steve, no James, she was normal, she was human, she was fine. It had been the status quo the past year. The mantra. The lie. Sighing, Darcy slumps back against her pillow. “Okay. Maybe I have been. But I just…”

Natasha sits before her. She places a hand on Darcy’s calf and gives her a reassuring squeeze. “You were in pain. You can’t beat yourself up about how you chose to deal with it.”

Darcy feels her throat start to swell with grief. “But I wasn’t dealing with it.”

“There is no timetable for trauma. You weren’t ready a year ago. Perhaps you are now.”

Darcy stays silent. Her gaze drifts from Natasha to her bedroom door. She hears nothing from the rest of her apartment, and she doesn’t dare reach out, not with her control dangling by so thin a thread. “Is he still here?”

“Not in the apartment,” Natasha says as she retracts her hand. “But he’s around. Just in case.”

The reference to the threat looming, Stern and Hydra and Von Strucker, the Maximoffs hunting Steve and his team, help pull Darcy from her distress. She blows out a long breath, raises a hand to her hair, and pushes it from her face. “Did Steve tell you? That I made contact with James?”

Natasha nods.

“Okay, so, since James won’t talk to me, I thought that I could make a connection between you two, between you and James, I mean, and he could tell you where he is. Then you can tell Steve and go… wherever.” Darcy swoops out her hand, miming a plane flying into the distance.

Natasha quirks a brow at the gestured aeronautics, but she says nothing to Darcy’s plan. She just stares. Sometimes Darcy wondered if Natasha were a telepath as well as a shapeshifter, but she knows her perceptive talents derived from a much more sinister force than a mutation, from her time at the Red Room being trained, and used, as a spy.

“Did you actually talk to James?” Natasha asks after a moment.

“No. He just tried to block me.”

“And you assumed that meant he didn’t want to speak with you?”

Darcy glares at Natasha, her lips compressed. “Don’t.”

“What?”

“Spin me the same shit that Steve tried to about James. You know why he’d block me, why he wouldn’t want me in his head.”

Natasha tries to reach out again for Darcy, but Darcy jerks away. She scrambles off the bed, her pulse racing as she escaped to the other side of the room.

“Darcy.” Natasha’s voice is quiet, calm, but too strong to deny. “James doesn’t blame you. He knows you were trying to help.”

“Well, I didn’t!” Darcy shouts as she swings back around. “I didn’t help. I almost-”

The memory of James beneath her, bloodied and broken, begging, begging her to stop, pushes its way into her mind. Darcy shudders at the remembrance. She lifts her hands and presses the heels of her palms against her eyes, as though she could block the images from the base, lock them away as she had James the past year. She’d only been trying to help. She thought that she could, training Steve, helping him gain control. But the rage within him had burned at the first touch, consuming her, and she had turned toward James, angry, so angry at his-

_I’m sorry._

Darcy startles at the voice. She jerks her hands down and opens her eyes. Natasha stands before her, but Darcy knows that she hadn’t spoken. She still feels James, filling the blank space in the back of her mind, though he’s retreated back to his cell.

Natasha peers at Darcy, her eyes narrowed. “What happened?”

“James. He just spoke to me.”

A second passes in which Natasha continues to stare and then her face relaxes into something that, on a pettier person, would be a triumphant smile.

Darcy huffs out a sigh. “Okay. Fine. You were right. _But_ ,” she says as Natasha opens her mouth to retort, “I still think you should be the one to talk to him. You know interrogations, how to get someone to tell you stuff-”

“None of which is necessary here. James isn’t an enemy combatant, Darcy. He doesn’t need to be questioned, just spoken to.”

“So speak to him.”

The vestiges of triumph fade from Natasha’s face. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Darcy eyes Natasha a moment before she says quietly, “Steve said you tried to help him find me. And that James wasn’t happy about it.”

“I did and he wasn’t. About that and other things.” Natasha turns away then, toward the small bench before Darcy’s vanity. She reaches for her phone in her back pocket, but looks at Darcy as she sits. “I’ll be here if you need me. But this is the best move forward. For him and for you.”

Darcy dithers, again, but Natasha turns away, keying in her code and beginning to text, maybe Steve, perhaps Sam. Sighing, Darcy turns and glances at the bed. James had reached out to her, to comfort her in her distress, or maybe to apologize for trying to block her, she doesn’t know which, but it was an opening at the least, enough for her to try again. Breathing in, Darcy returns to her bed and reclaims her seat. She glances at the door, but she feels nothing, Steve beyond the natural range of her ability. 

After a second, she closes her eyes and returns once more to the cell.

Nothing had changed in the time Darcy had been away, except that James waits for her now. To an outside observer, he would seem composed, perhaps a bit tense with his jaw clenched. But she isn’t an outside observer. She sees him from the inside out, and his exhaustion hangs clear, heavy around his shoulders, held at bay by a sharp thrust of panic, by longing and regret, by the rebar slamming into her, piercing her gut, as James heaved her up and away.

Darcy tenses, waiting for the flash of phantom pain that always followed a remembrance of that day at the base, but nothing comes, not this time, this not her memory, but his, this his desperate attempt to stop her from killing him. James lowers his gaze, first to her stomach as though the rebar still remained, and then to the floor. Darcy catches the faint tremor in his hand before he grips the armrest and bears down hard.

Darcy expects to feel the same tremor within herself, but her voice is steady when she speaks. “You had to do it.”

James shakes his head.

“Yes, you did. I was killing you.”

He looks away rather than respond, twisting his head toward the wall. 

Darcy considers pressing, spurred by his grief and her guilt, but time ticked away, so instead she breathes in and changes focus. “Do you know where you are?”

James says nothing. He doesn’t even look at her.

“James-”

“Go away.”

Darcy narrows her eyes at him. “No. Do you know what they’re going to do to you?”

Again, he says nothing, but his jaw clenches and she feels the certainty within him. He knows.

“Then let me help you,” she says. “Tell me where you are and I-”

The room flickers, momentarily growing dark as James closes his eyes and tries to break the link between them. Darcy pushes back, so hard that his head jerks back and his eyes fly open, locking on her once more.

Darcy drops her gaze. Her stomach churns and her chest heaves. One minute. Just one minute in his company and she did it again. She forced her will upon him. The Hydra base looms before her again, James bloodied beneath her, begging and broken as she tightened her grip on his mind, as she strove to kill him. Darcy digs her nails into the palms of her hands now, focusing on the pain, fluorescent bright in her mind. “I’m sorry,” she says after a moment. “I didn’t mean- I just… Tell me where you are, and I’ll go. I’ll- Please…” 

Her plea fades into silence. Darcy says nothing else, she does nothing else, she stares at the floor and breathes in deep, searching for calm, for control. She waits and she hopes, and after a beat, James speaks.

“No.”

Her head snaps up at that. James stares at her, tears in his eyes but his jaw set. Darcy gapes at him a second before she says, “We’re trying to save you.”

“I know.” He pauses then and, for the first time since she arrived, he looks at her, at all of her, taking her in as Steve had when he first arrived at her apartment. Darcy feels James, his gaze, as a tangible touch upon her, so potent she nearly swoons. His gaze lingers on her lips and he starts to breathe fast but then his eyes close and the room tilts, it dims and dissolves and finally goes black, his last echoing in the dark.

_Stop._

_Stop trying._

Gasping, Darcy opens her eyes. Her bedroom greets her now, not the prison cell, James finally succeeding in closing the link between them. 

Natasha looks up from her phone, a frown creasing her brow. “What happened?”

Darcy pushes off the bed. “He shut me out.”

“What?”

Darcy ignores the question. She strides for the door, wrenching it open and starting down the hall for the kitchen. Her throat swells and her breath hitches. Darcy presses her lips flat as she rounds the corner into the kitchen. Reaching up, she grabs another glass from the cabinet. Reaching down, she snags the whiskey bottle that Happy gave her at the start of the semester. Smacking the glass onto the counter, Darcy twists off the cap and pours a shot, lifting it upon finishing to swallow the lot. As Natasha stops in the entryway, Darcy pours another and throws back this one as well, grimacing at the burn down her throat. She resists a third drink, instead placing the glass and the bottle and her hands on the counter, the latter digging in hard. 

A few seconds pass before Natasha speaks. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t _know_ ,” Darcy says again, her voice rising as she turns from the counter. “He tries to shut me out, then he tells me he’s sorry. He tells me to go away, then he looks at me like he- like he…” 

“Like he still loves you?” Natasha asks after a beat.

Darcy glares at her for that, but the look fails to quell Natasha. Instead, she says, panic clawing its way up her throat, “I can’t do this. You and Steve, you both seem to think he’s just _dying_ to talk to me. And maybe he was, but he isn’t now. James doesn’t want me to help him, and maybe it’s the _me_ part or maybe it’s the _help_ part, and before, before, you know, it wouldn’t have mattered because I could have just gone right in and-” Darcy breaks off, one hand up, swiping at the air as though snatching a thought from a mind. “But I _can’t_ ,” she says now, jerking her hand back down to her side. “I can’t. I can’t do this, Natasha.”

“Okay.” Natasha holds up her hands, both her gesture and her tone placating. “We’ll find another way.”

“No. I need this done.” Darcy starts past her for the living room. “I need to know that you know where he is, that you and Steve are going there, that you’re saving him. Then I can just… forget. Forget today, forget this, just get back to my life.” She plops down onto the couch, jostling the pile of books and papers, sending them tumbling to the floor. Darcy wants to kick them, to rip them to shreds, to go back in time and never open her door to Steve, never say yes to his offer, to his kiss that day in the meadow, to his plea to help James, to the way James had looked at her, sunburnt and sandy, his eyes as hot as the Caribbean sun. Instead, she sits, her hands in fists and her pulse pounding fast.

Natasha edges into view on silent feet. Darcy feels her gaze, but she doesn’t meet it. Instead, she twists on the couch until she faces her and holds out her hands. Natasha might sigh, she might press her lips flat, but she climbs over the armrest and settles opposite Darcy without a word.

As Natasha clasps her hands, Darcy says, her voice tight, “Jarvis, high alert until we get back.”

“Yes, Miss.”

Closing her eyes then, Darcy establishes a connection with Natasha and then she brings them to the cell. James sits, eyeing the space Darcy last stood. His eyes snap straight to Natasha as soon as they resolve before him. 

“How could you let him do this?” he asks. “Bring her into this?”

Natasha arches a cool brow. “I didn’t _let_ Steve do anything. He does what he wants, like always.”

“But you found her for him. You told him.” 

Darcy feels a flash of irritation within Natasha, but she keeps her face composed as she looks at James. “I did. But it was either that or let him barge into Stark’s tower, and you know how that would have ended.”

James glares at her. “Better that than this.”

“Hey!” Darcy snaps. “I’m just trying to help you.”

James stills. His mouth goes thin. He says nothing though, he doesn’t even look at her, but Darcy can feel something through the link, a pulse of an emotion she can’t quite parcel, still finding her footing again with three minds in a link. 

Natasha glances at her then back at James. “What’s done is done. You can have it out with Steve later. Now we need to find you. Do you know anything, a location, a name?”

James turns away from Natasha as he had from Darcy, tilting his face toward the wall. 

Darcy looks at Natasha, sees her brows draw together in a frown.

Natasha peers at him a moment before she speaks. When she does, her voice is low but intent. “James, they will use you to start a war. To hunt us down and kill us. I know you don’t want that. Everything you have ever done has been to protect us.”

Darcy glances back at James. He’s closed his eyes, gripped hard at the armrest again, but she still sees him tremble, she feels him waver, swayed by Natasha’s plea.

“Help me find you,” Natasha continues. “I can come for you myself. I don’t have to tell Steve.”

At that, James’ eyes snap open. His posture changes, his spine straightening, his head tilting back to peer at them. “Sergeant James Barnes, 32557038.”

Natasha stares, her mouth parted and her eyes wide. Then everything on her face compresses, it goes flat and hard. She turns toward Darcy without another word and tilts her head to go. Darcy eyes first her and then James, but Natasha gives her nothing, her face blank, and James keeps his stonewalling gaze on Natasha. Sighing, Darcy guides both her and Natasha back to her living room. She feels Natasha spring up off the couch before she even opens her eyes. When she does a second later, she spots Natasha a few feet away, one arm crossed over her middle, the other hovering over her mouth.

“So,” Darcy says as she stretches out her legs, “that went well.”

Natasha ignores the flip comment. “He’s not going to tell us where he is.”

“Nope. Doesn’t seem like it.”

“Why not?”

Darcy shrugs. “He’s angry with you. He’s angry with me. He’s angry with Steve.”

Natasha lowers her arm. “Enough to reject our help? Knowing what they want to do with him?” She shakes her head then and lowers her arm. “No. It doesn’t make sense.”

Darcy shifts, placing her feet flat on the floor. “Okay, so is this a plan? Did he want to be caught? Maybe to get into Hydra, stop it from the inside?”

Natasha contemplates the possibility, but after a moment, she shakes her head again. “I don’t see the advantage. They know how dangerous he is. His arm’s gone. He’s collared. Waiting for them to make a mistake, so he can get free, is a long shot.” 

“Okay, then what?”

Natasha eyes her a moment, her lips pursed. “What matters more to James than mutant safety?”

“Steve.”

The response is automatic, enduring and indisputable, inevitable though Darcy had tried to deny it when she was with James. It had only been a matter of time, him remembering Steve. She’d been so stupid, so stupid to think-

“And you.”

The comment jerks her from her thoughts. Glancing up, she finds Natasha staring at her with an arched brow. Darcy shakes her head as she pushes up off the couch. “He doesn’t. Not anymore.”

Natasha moves closer to her. “Then why did he speak to you, if not anymore?”

Darcy crosses her arms over her chest. “He didn’t. He-”

“I don’t mean in the cell. I mean here, when you were upset. He spoke to you.” 

Darcy clenches her jaw and looks away.

From the corners of her eyes, she sees Natasha tilt her head to the side. “What did he say?”

Darcy looks back at her and lifts her chin. “‘Better that than this.’”

Natasha makes a soft sound, perhaps a sigh, or a coo to calm a troubled soul. She closes the few feet between them and lays soft hands on Darcy’s shoulders. “Darcy, дорогая, you left. You got out. James thinks that you’re safe here. That you’re happy. He knows exactly how much he and Steve hurt you, and he doesn’t want that to happen again. So he’s angry with me and Steve for bringing you in. He’s not angry with _you_.”

The last upends her. Darcy looks away, her throat tight and face hot. 

“This is it,” Natasha continues, releasing her shoulders. “He’s protecting one of you. Or both of you. You know I’m right.”

Darcy does. Protecting mutants and protecting Steve, the twin forces within James, pushing for him to lash out against humans to protect mutants, but compelling him to pull back, to skirt the edge of outright war for Steve.

And, for a time, for her.

“You’ve got to talk to him again.”

Darcy gapes at Natasha. “And say what, Nat? He wouldn’t even look at me this last time. That’s why I got you in the first place.”

Natasha shakes her head. “You don’t need me. Just talk to him.”

“Nat-”

“No. An agenda won’t work. He’ll know it’s from me. Just _talk_ to him, Darcy. It’s what he wants.”

Darcy’s breath catches in her chest, her body taut, fraught and trembling. “But he blocked me.”

Natasha lifts a hand and places two fingers on Darcy’s forehead. “ _You_ blocked _him_.”

Tears prick her eyes, spill over her lashes, and salt her lips. “I was trying to protect him.”

Natasha lowers her hand to cup the side of Darcy’s face. “So is he, дорогая.”

The first sob wrenches at her. Darcy tries to turn away from Natasha, but Natasha reaches for her hands and pulls her from the couch into a hug. The floodgates buckle at the touch. Almost a year since Darcy last hugged someone, physical contact diminishing the barriers she erected around her mind. Natasha doesn’t cling as tightly as Tony had then, the relief in him crashing over her in waves as she woke in the hospital, the rebar removed and her middle swathed in bandages. But there is strength in Natasha’s embrace, and comfort too, one hand soothing Darcy’s back as she cried. 

*


	4. Part Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy tries one last time to talk to James.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to those who left comments! I truly appreciate it. I hope you enjoy this part. Hopefully I'll get the next one finished in about two weeks, too.

Diving into the Wreck  
Part Four

As composed as she’ll ever be, back in her bedroom with Natasha standing sentry in her kitchen, Darcy closes her eyes and returns to the cell. She doesn’t immediately reveal herself to James but takes a moment to study him. He sits with his eyes closed, his head tipped back against the chair. Sweat dots his face, the drugs the government had pumped into him beginning to work their way out of his system. She feels the barrier he’d erected between them; she’d taught him how to do it, to withstand psychic interrogations as Howard had taught Steve so many years ago. Longing tugs at her at the thought of Howard. Steve had told her after they met that Howard had been a mutant too, a telepath like her. Howard had been the one to help Steve, fresh from the machine, serum coursing hot through his veins, to control his rage. If Darcy could have met him, if he could have taught her how to control her ability, then maybe things would be different, maybe the disaster at the base could have been averted, and the past year too, and now, James in the cell, at the mercy of Hydra once more, and all to protect Steve.

Or perhaps her.

Darcy bites down on her bottom lip at that. Natasha claimed that James still loved her, perhaps was still in love with her, despite what had happened at the base. She doubts that Natasha knows about the other though, about the alley, about James remembering, finally, _finally_ , remembering Steve, and he- 

The thought stops as James opens his eyes. He glances around the room, his brow furrowed, his breath coming fast. Darcy watches as he licks his lips, as he stares at the spot where she had last stood. Seconds pass. Darcy tries to calm herself, to retreat from the brink and steady herself once more. She doesn’t think she succeeds, but James doesn’t reach out to her as he had before. The barrier remains between them. She watches as he closes his eyes and breathes in, and Darcy finds herself mirroring the shaky inhale, the long exhale. The past was the past and the present now the present, and Darcy needed to focus on this, for her sake and for his. 

“So,” she says as she reveals herself, “who is it? The person you’re trying to protect.”

Eyes snapping open, James zeroes on her. Darcy feels his pulse races and panic zip bright up his spine at the sight of her.

“Is it me?” she continues, tilting her head at him. “Or is it Steve?”

He shuts down at that, turning away from her. “I’m not-”

“Don’t try to deny it. I can feel it. I’m not even trying and I can. So just tell me who it is.”

James says nothing; he just stares at the wall. A muscle ticks in his jaw and a bead of sweat drips down the side of his face.

“James-”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’ve made my decision.”

Darcy gapes at him a moment before she shakes her head. “You can’t make a decision like this for one of us.”

James looks at her then, his head tilted back and one brow cocked. “Why not? You did.”

The accusation renders her silent, just long enough for anger to spark within her. “I left because of _me_. Because I needed-” She stops, her mouth snapping shut on the past. “It’s not the same.”

“I think it is.”

“How? I didn’t leave to sacrifice myself on some goddamn suicide mission.”

“No, you left because of me. Me and Steve. Because we-”

She looks away, down to the floor. “Stop. I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Then leave. It’s what you did before.”

Her head jerks up with a gasp. James falters at her stare, at the tears that start to prick her eyes. “Darcy, I-”

She doesn’t give him a chance to finish, pulling back to her bedroom without another word. The distance fails to quell her tears, to keep the memories at bay. She had thought it was a dream at first, James on the recon mission of the Hydra base with Steve. But she knew the feel of reality too well to deny the truth for long. The alley flickered past now, the desperate grip that Steve had on James as the last puzzle piece clicked into place for him, as he looked at Steve and finally, _finally_ , remembered. James never noticed her, despite their connection, overwhelmed as he was by his past and by Steve, by the fierce, desperate love that gripped them both, from before the war and from now.

Shaking, Darcy draws her legs up. She wraps her arms around them and lays her head on her knees. She’d been stupid, so very, very stupid to believe, to think that-

“I’m sorry.”

Darcy flinches at the sound of his voice, at the nearness of him, James following their link back to her, to here in her bedroom. “Go away.”

“I can’t.”

She lifts her head then, incredulity overpowering her reluctance to engage. “Are you serious? All I’ve heard from you since I found you is ‘go away,’ ‘leave me alone.’ And now you suddenly want to chat?”

“Not chat. Apologize.”

Darcy shuts her mouth with a snap. She stares at James, or at the image of himself, nearly the same as the real man but with his left arm intact. Remorse tilts his brows, but he meets her stare head on, his shoulders square and his jaw set. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, the last cracking, going whisper soft. “I never meant to hurt you.”

Darcy looks away, down to her bedspread. “I know. I was there.” Her eyes find his again. “You never even thought of me at all.”

James flinches. He withstands the blow better than she had, remaining here with her rather than blinking back to the cell. Guilt slivers through her gut. Before she can soothe the sting, he says, “It wasn’t that I didn’t think about you. That I chose not to. I _couldn’t_ think. You know that. You helped me remember. You know. The memories… overwhelm everything.”

Darcy drops her gaze. She picks at a loose thread on her bedspread. “I know.”

“And that… Steve…” He stops. The hitch in his voice brings her eyes back to him. James peers off in the distance, back to the past, to the alley, to the simple comment from Steve about James finding him here, nose bloodied and clothes dirty from a brawl, more than once in the past. Here, in the now, he presses his lips flat and swallows hard, but the emotion fails to settle, sending a shiver along his spine. After a beat, he continues, quieter. “He was the first thing they took from me. What they kept taking, again and again. Remembering him…” James pauses once more to shake his head. “I felt... whole. Like myself. Finally. I didn’t want to let that go.” He grimaces then and his eyes flit up to hers. “It’s no excuse. I know it. It wasn’t then and not with-”

He bites the thought back, but Darcy hears it anyway. Not with her. When he kissed her. Darcy had been with Steve then and James knew it, but Steve was just a name to him, a fact in plain text in a history book. No matter what Darcy tried, she couldn’t find their memories together. Session after session in the chair had scored them away, buried them deep within James. So he’d felt no loyalty to Steve when he’d kissed her, no emotion beyond dim gratitude for Steve helping save him from Hydra. 

“I was going to tell you,” he says now as he opens his eyes. “After the mission. But…”

But the Sentinels at the base. But Hydra and Pierce.

But Steve, pushed to the brink and then past it, by James and their betrayal, by James going awol to kill Pierce, by the realization that, no matter how hard Steve fought, Hydra endured, slithering back to prominence, born by the world and their hatred of mutants.

But Darcy, trying to help, to calm the rage within Steve, but angry, so angry, at herself, at James and Steve, at the world that wanted her dead for nothing more than a quirk of genetics; the rage in Steve had stoked hers, consuming her, pushing her to brink, to strike back and kill.

Darcy looks at James and he back at her, the wreck of their past scattered before them, as gutted and hollow as Steve had been when he recoiled from her fear, as James now as he stands before her. She feels empty, drained dry. She’d retreated from the shore, from the world, she’d bobbed like a buoy in the vast, dark sea, but she dismays at the thought of continuing to tread the waters, of drifting away, of choosing to drown.

Air fills her lungs, Darcy breathing in, breathing deep. She unwraps her arms from around her legs, pulls the edge of her sleeve up over her hand, and wipes the remains of tears from her face. Drawing in another breath, she stretches out her legs, wincing at the tightness of her muscles, but she relishes the burn, the sharp bite of pain from the first lurch toward shore.

“I know I got no right asking you anything,” James says now, his voice still soft, his hands fisted by his sides, “but if you’d do this for me, could you- could you talk to Steve, after-”

“After?”

James averts his gaze, he tries to pull away, but Darcy feels the answer in the ebb along the link. 

After he’s gone. 

“No.”

James looks back at her. 

“There is no after. There’s just now. And now you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”

James stares at her a moment before he shakes his head and huffs out a disbelieving laugh.

Darcy lifts her chin at him. “Why not?”

James clenches his jaw. “I got my reasons.”

“That’s not good enough.”

James shakes his head at her again. “Why are you doing this? After what we did to you?”

“Because Natasha was right. It’s not just about you. Or Steve. Or even me. Hydra will use you to start a war, to justify registration, and then they’ll hunt us down and kill us all.” She shakes her head at him, though he averts his eyes once more. “That’s everything you’ve fought against. You can’t let it happen now. Not for me or for Steve. You know he wouldn’t want that. Ever. He’d rather sacrifice himself than let you-”

Darcy stops as James closes his eyes. She stops as he tenses, as the truth flashes brief, but bright, spurred by her appeal. She stops as she knows, as James thinks it, despite his efforts to keep her and the truth at bay.

Steve.

“It’s not you,” she says as she starts to stand. “It’s him. They’re gonna use Steve to start the war.”

James remains silent a beat, mulish, furious at her for discerning the truth, before he gives in and nods. “Him coming to get me. They want him attacking the base so they can blare it all over the goddamn news and turn people against him. So they can point their fingers at him and say, ‘See. _See_. All of them are bad. All of them are dangerous. Even _him_.’ Then they can pass their law and get their fucking money and build their Sentinels again and…” James goes silent, the apocalyptic future of Sentinels and registration not needing to be spoken. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

Darcy moves toward him, her brow creased. “But he doesn’t know where you are. Nobody does. Natasha and Daisy tried, but they couldn’t find you.”

James meets her eyes. “No. But you did.”

Darcy blinks at him. Then blinks again. “What?”

“The first thing that Hydra did when they got me again was put me back in the chair, but it didn’t work. It didn’t work, Darcy.” He doesn’t reach for her, but she knows he wants to, compelled by the emotion gushing within him, rushing from him as a wave, as a gust of hurricane wind, to her. “Whatever you did, you fixed me. Hydra can’t take anything from me ever again. No one can.” He breathes fast and his eyes go fierce as he looks at her. “And you wonder how I could do this? For you and for him. How could I not? I’d be nothing if not for the two of you.”

Darcy swallows hard. She holds herself fast against the strength of his resolve, of his love for the two of them. “No one knows about me, James.”

“No, but they know _of_ you. They know someone helped me. That Steve trusted someone enough to work with me. To fix me.”

“But they don’t know it was me.”

“No, but they knew about Howard. That he was a telepath. Christ, Darcy, that’s why they had me kill him. He was getting too close. And your father... He makes his pro-mutant turn, when? Your thirteenth birthday?” James fixes his gaze on her, panic pounding his heart. “Hydra has been searching for you for at least six months. That’s why I was in Vermont. That’s how they got me. I’m not just bait for Steve. I’m bait for _you_.”

Darcy goes breathless. “But how-”

The sound of the alarm cuts short her question. 

Above the screech of the claxon, Jarvis says, “Intruder detected, Ms. Lewis. The woman Captain Rogers identified as Wanda Maximoff.”

James gasps. The images come fast, not just to him, but to Darcy too, fear smashing the barrier between them. Wanda lifting her hand, touching him, making him see himself not as he is but as he was, as the Soldier again, Steve dead at his feet, Darcy dying at his hands, and Natasha and Sam and Clint, everyone, the entire team, James killing them all, the Sentinels closing in, flying fast, to kill them, kill them all- 

James looks at her now, his face gone pale. “Run.”

*


End file.
